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7 things to do this week in Kortrijk, Tournai, Ghent, Brussels, and Antwerp from avantgarde pop music festivals to exhibitions and performances. See you there!

Art festival: NEXT

From 9 to 25 November Kortrijk/Tournai

7 things to do

Every autumn, NEXT presents an exceptional selection of international theatre and dance in the cross-border Eurometropolis Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai and Valenciennes. For the occasion, around  28 Flemish, Walloon and French cultural and artistic houses join forces. This 10th anniversary edition once again offers a highly interesting and varied program, which among others features renowned American-Lebanese artist Walid Raad, who in the past participated in the Venice Biennale or documenta in Kassel. For NEXT, he created ‘”Kicking the dead in 31 short episodes (or less or more)”, on view until 12 November in Kunstencentrum BUDA in Kortrijk. The exhibition is based on his research about World War I in the Flanders Fields museum in Ieper while linking it to critical reflections on the new Louvre in Abu Dhabi, which also opens this week.

Concert: Black Lips at Trix

Thursday, 9 November Antwerp

Earlier this year American rock outfit Black Lips released its latest record “Satan’s Graffiti or God’s Art?”, sticking to the fuzzy, dirty rock’n’roll they’re famous for. This week you can experience the troupe known for their provocative stage antics live at Antwerp’s Trix: watch out for chickens, flaming guitars, and other interesting surprises. Support act is the Belgian garage-surf band Alpha Whale.

Opening: Ethan Greenbaum at Super Dakota

Thursday, 9 November Brussels

“Cardboard Landscapes”, a reference to an essay in a book by Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri, is the title of New York-based artist Ethan Greenbaum‘s very first solo show in Belgium. Just like Ghirri, Greenbaum reimagines and recontextualizes everyday objects, especially windows, walls, doors and signage he finds in our urban environments. At Super Dakota, he presents a new group of low relief sculptural photographs along with a vinyl recreation of a construction fence in the gallery’s street window. Greenbaum’s solo show is accompanied by “No Transport”, a group exhibition on the lower gallery floor which the artist himself co-curated and serves as a sort of prelude.

Performance: Who With Their Mouth Full of Flint at Art Cinema OFFoff

Sunday, 12 November Ghent

Brussels-based dance and poetry artist Billie Hanne and Icelandic sound artist Hallveig Ágústsdóttir team up this weekend for a multi-layered performance merging their practices in an utterly compelling way. While Hanne explores human intimacy through space, time, objects and light weaving together lyric power with rhythm, Hallveig explores the sound experience of movements and markings in her process of image creation.

Music: Schiev Festival at Beursschouwburg

From 10 to 12 November Brussels

7 things to do in Kortrijk

© Thomas Ost / Laura Van Snick

Schiev festival, whose eclectic program not only includes concerts but also talks and a label market, revolves around a broad vision of avant-garde pop music: with a clear focus on emerging talents and the local scene, the 3-day music bash at Beursschouwburg puts forward Belgian and international projects aiming at overcoming the boundaries of their genre or push it to its limits. With Hiele, Mr. Mitch, Machine Woman, and others.

Opening: Gilbert & George at Albert Baronian

Thursday, 9 November Brussels

George, born in Devon, and Gilbert, born in Italy in a small village in the Dolomites, met as students on the sculpture course at St Martins School of Art in London. The two started exhibiting and creating art together, which they’re still doing now, several decades later. “The Beard Pictures” at Brussels’ Albert Baronian gallery presents their latest creations,  violent, eerie, grotesque, lurid and crazed.

Opening: Four Rooms for Five Thoughts at Annie Gentils

Sunday, 12 November Antwerp

7 things to do in Kortrijk

Here’s another artist duo: Herman van Ingelgem and Chloé Op de Beeck started working together in 2015 after a phase of intense correspondence. Together they have been researching how this dialogue and sharing of experiences can be a method of working. With different media from drawings and installations to videos and sculptures they question how language and memory work in relationship to their surroundings. On view at Antwerp’s Annie Gentils gallery.

Cover photo Miles Fischler

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